System developers have struggled to keep pace with the quantum leaps in a computer/hardware arena. Faced with growing application backlogs and skyrocketing maintenance costs, the system development community has sought productivity and quality improvements using various Computer Aided Software Engineering (CASE) tools such as the Information Engineering Facility (IEF) and Composer products of Texas Instruments Incorporated. The subject of Information Engineering has been discussed and described in many text books by James Martin, such as "Information Engineering" Book No. 3 Design and Construction, published in 1990 by Prentice-Hall Incorporated (ISBN 0-13-465501-X). Texas Instruments has published sets of IEF books since 1988. Information Engineering provides a comprehensive framework for satisfying the information needs of a business or an organization. The information engineering encompasses all phases of the software life cycle. It includes the techniques for performing strategic information planning, analysis, design and system construction. The range extends from analyzing business objectives to constructing executable programs in a target environment. There are generally seven stages of Information Engineering. The first is an information strategy planning stage where planners gain a broad view of the information needs of a particular business. From this information, they create a blue print for the future and subdivide the blue print into smaller segments. The second stage is the business area analysis, where the analysts examine a particular segment of the business called a business area and during that stage, they develop a detailed conceptual model of a business area based on the information needs. In the third stage, often referred to as the Business System Design, the designers detail business system with a particular business area. They consider how the user will interact with the business system without concerning themselves with a target computing environment. During the fourth stage, called the technical design stage, the designers tailor the results of the business systems design to the target computing environment, wherein they consider the hardware environment operating system teleprocessing monitor and the database management system. In the fifth stage called the construction stage, the developers generate all executable components of the system. These include the programs, databases, job control statements, screen formats and transaction definitions. These pieces enable the application system to run on a selected target environment. In the sixth stage, called the transition stage, the developers install the newly constructed application system in the production environment. In the seventh stage, called the production stage, the business realizes the full benefit of the application system wherein the execution satisfies the specific business needs identified during the information strategy planning.
Texas Instruments began automating information engineering methodology for its own use in 1983, based on the techniques first devised by James Martin Associates. From this genesis, the Information Engineering Facility and Composer products came into being as TI quickly realized the potential impact and usefulness in the overall market place. The result of this effort is a fully integrated set of software tools and automated programs that simplify application development to improve system quality and enhance productivity. FIG. 1 illustrates the primary components of the Information Engineering Facility (IEF). Key elements of the IEF implementation include sophisticated diagraming model under development. These diagrams actively contribute to pseudo code, target code and data base code. The diagrams automatically interconnect within the business model where a change to one causes change in another. There is automatic transformation of results from one stage to another, such as, for example, from a Business Area Analysis entity types and processes automatically result in design-level records and procedures. Similarly, design level records and procedures automatically transform into databases and application programs during the construction phase. There are built in rules ensure consistency and completeness within each stage across the stages. The IEF enforces synchronization so that early stage diagrams remain current and consistent with later diagrams throughout the software development life cycle. The other key elements are automatic consistency checking and automatic high level language and database generation and project coordination. A central repository of business models resides on the mainframe. The information engineering relies heavily on a standardize use of diagrams to convey conceptual ideals. Symbols such as color boxes and interconnecting lines represent data activities and their interaction of various levels of abstraction. As developers progress through the stages, associated diagrams reveal increasing levels of detail. For example, during the early stages of information engineering, block diagrams represent conceptual data objects called entity types and conceptual activities called functions and processes. During later stages, data oriented diagrams depict the physical layouts of records while activity-oriented diagrams show detailed and procedure steps. The information engineering is a visual approach to development, wherein the graphics help developers visualize their ideas on many levels.
At the foundation of information engineering is divide and conquer where developers address successively smaller portions of the business model as level of detail increases, thus reducing each tasks to a manageable size. For example, one Information Strategy Planning project may produce ten Business Area Analysis projects which may result in 100 Business System Design projects. Each stage of information engineering carries its own set of tasks and deliverables. The task list includes all milestones and check points that serve as a basis for projects scheduling and resource allocation. Each project requires a project sponsor; a senior executive with overall authority and responsibility project. The project requires project team members that include project manager and individual contributors with appropriate business skills. The members of the initial project team must gather information to determine the mission, objectives, goals and critical success factors of the enterprise. In addition to these facts, they must have plenty of expertise to develop an Information Strategy Plan in a high level business model.
Client/server applications are maturing. The number of users supported by the average application will double in the next year. Companies are implementing more and more real applications and are demanding scalability in their application development tools. It is desirable to provide a client/server type, IEF type CASE tool where the development projects are always coordinated between the developers with real time model sharing, so changes to the model are reflected immediately to all of the work stations.